Rushed pacing and ineffective character development keep the story from living up to its potential.
A young boy gets lost and then kidnapped on a school trip to Jamaica’s Cockpit Country.
High schooler Kemar McBayne is looking forward to the school’s Ecology Club trip, along with his older brother, Oshane, and his younger brother, Tyrik, who’s only 10. His contentious relationship with his little brother causes trouble when an act of mischief on Tyrik’s part almost immediately leads to Kemar’s separation from the group. Unable to make his way back to them, he is later found and befriended by a stranger who turns out to have ulterior motives and holds Kemar hostage in the notoriously difficult-to-navigate Cockpit Country. Kemar decides to try to figure out a way to escape his captor and return to his family. At the same time, Oshane is determined to find his brother despite the others’ support, eventually enlisting the help of one of the region’s Maroon communities in order to track him down. Elm includes interesting, detailed aspects of Jamaican geography and culture that help readers visualize the characters’ experiences. However, this aspect of the novel is not enough to make up for jumpy pacing and storytelling that fails to build suspense or create attachment to the characters or plot. Characters are mostly Black, with some secondary characters mentioned as having pale skin and foreign accents.
Rushed pacing and ineffective character development keep the story from living up to its potential. (Adventure. 8-13)Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-976-8267-31-3
Page Count: 148
Publisher: Blouse & Skirt Books
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
A reasonably comprehensive handbook, though it’s confined to classical low- to no-tech methods.
Simple directions for using codes, ciphers, and steganography to send secret messages to friends or fellow spies.
After opening with an overview of historical cryptography from the “Caesar cipher” and an ancient Chinese script called Nushu (used exclusively by women) to the Enigma machine and other World War II–era coding devices, Hunt proceeds to describe over two dozen ways to hide or disguise messages. Along with substitution codes, letter and number grids, anagrams, a tic-tac-toe cipher, a Vigenère table, and like techniques, she provides recipes for invisible ink, instructions for creating paper decoder bracelets or rings, and templates to copy for an Alberti cipher wheel. Most of the illustrations are charts or simple line drawings, with a sprinkling of human figures (all seem to be white). The author adds frequent practice pages with blank lines and short secret messages to decode, and she closes with a series of longer puzzles (answer key included) in a final “Cryptographic Challenge.” But young would-be coders hoping to find more than passing nods to computer programs or cellphone tools—or even that much about modern advances in cryptography—will be disappointed.
A reasonably comprehensive handbook, though it’s confined to classical low- to no-tech methods. (sources) (Nonfiction. 10-12)Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60286-339-2
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Weinstein Books
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
A touching, playful, and satisfying tale of a silver-screen wonder dog.
Before Rin Tin Tin and Lassie there was Strongheart, the first canine movie star, whose real-life career serves as the basis of this fast-paced, dramatic story from Fleming and Rohmann.
In the silent-film era of the 1920s, director Larry Trimble decides his next big movie star will be a dog and in Berlin finds what he is looking for: a thoroughly trained, 3-year-old, male German shepherd with a fierce disposition named Etzel. Renamed Strongheart, Trimble’s find becomes an instant superstar with the release of his first film, The Silent Call, in 1921. Strongheart has an off-screen romance with his leading lady in the appropriately titled The Love Master, resulting in a litter of puppies. The climax of the story is a dramatic courtroom trial in which Strongheart stands accused of attacking and killing 6-year-old Sofie Bedard, but boys from an orphanage produce Sofie in court at the last moment. Strongheart is vindicated when it’s discovered Sofie’s parents orchestrated her disappearance for an extortion scheme. Like a silent movie plot, Fleming’s narrative is full of adventure, romance, and suspense. An author’s note explains the facts behind the story. Rohmann’s expressive illustrations beautifully capture Strongheart’s personality; their integration into the book’s design is striking. Particularly notable are three two-page spreads depicting the dog contemplating and then stealing a doughnut.
A touching, playful, and satisfying tale of a silver-screen wonder dog. (photos, bibliography, notes) (Historical fiction. 8-12)Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-93410-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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